Nine Matching Segments With Tara

Tara (again)
I have discussed Tara's matches with my families here and here, but there have been some changes in the GEDmatch results and in any case, I'd like to develop and summarize it all in one place.

Tara approached me last summer with a match of 70 cM on chromosome 3 with my father's late first cousin Herb and a set of other family members within that large segment. This is a remarkably large segment with a total stranger.

Subsequently, I found three others in my family on that segment, but the GEDmatch "one-to-many" search does not see them. Those three are my fourth cousins Anna and David (half-siblings) and my third cousin Joe.

In the meantime, Tara's mother and her paternal grandmother have also tested, so we can see from whom Tara received her matching segments. Let's look at them one at a time.

Chromosome 3 (left)
It's a small segment and normally I wouldn't bother mentioning it, but it's right here in front of me. The five blue segments are my parents' children and the 12.5 cM green segment is my half second cousin Fred. The triangulation is good. So while this is not a large match, it does point someplace fairly specific - my Rosenzweig/Zelinka side from Trencin County Slovakia.

Tara's mother has this same segment. Her family lived in Romania - not close but not far. In any case, it is clearly not from a recent common ancestor.

Chromosome 3 (right)
Most of my family matches on this large segment are from Tara's mother. None are from her paternal grandmother. Vladimir and my third cousin Joe match neither, so must be from Tara's paternal grandfather. (Joe's segment is a bit to the left of Vladimir's, so they may come from different ancestors.)

The matches who show up on the one-to-many are all descendants of my great-grandparents so the common ancestor could be upstream from either the Kwoczkas or the Pikholzes. But when we add in Anna and David, we lose the Kwoczka option. So the common ancestor with Tara's mother feeds through my third-great-grandparents Izak Josef Pikholz and his wife Rojse, whose surname is unknown.

According to the "Matching Segments" tool at GEDmatch, there are eight kits that match both Tara's mother and my cousin Herb and are greater than 12 cM. Two are 12.7 cM and two (with a joint email) are 15.6 cM. The other four are in the 18-23 cM range and I have written them all. Maybe something will come of that.

Chromosome 6

The two matches on this nearly 11 cM segment belong to Steve and his cousin Jen. There are a few other smaller segments with these two matches. Steve wrote about his family recently and it seems to me that this match is on Steve's Werfel side. We know nothing about them except that they lived in east Galicia.

Tara received this segment from her mother.

Chromosome 8

This is a 13.3 cM segment. Lines 1,2 and 5 are my sisters and line 4 is my brother. Line 3 is my first cousin Kay on my mother's side. None of my second cousins on either side have this segment, so I cannot be more specific. The geography is Belarus/Lithuania.

Tara received this segment from her paternal grandmother.

Chromosome 23 (left)

These X segments are two of my sisters and me. The largest of the three is just over 16 cM. Since I get no X from my father, this must be on my mother's side. But with no second cousins, we cannot be more specific than that.

Tara received this segment from her mother. Her family lived in Romania and my mother's in Belarus and Lithuania, so this is likely very far back.

Chromosome 23 (right)

Lines 1 and 3 of this 11 cM segment are my sisters and line 4 is my cousin Kay, so all we get from that is that it's my mother's side. However another match in the same place shows up only on a one-to-one search.

That would be my second cousin Ruth, on my grandfather's side. So we know that on my side this is Gordon or Kugel. From Tara's side, this is her paternal grandmother.
Ruth has done a full MtDNA test, so we know that our great-grandmother Chana Kugel's haplogroup is R01a. I have suggested to Tara that she have her grandmother do a full MtDNA test.

Three more matches
The title of this blog refers to nine segments and I have summarized six. The other three are from Tara's grandmother but did not come down to Tara.

The five matches on the left are nearly 11 cM. The first of the five is my second cousin Terry on my Pikholz/Kwoczka side; the other four are two of my sisters, my brother and me. It probably represents a fairly distant common ancestor.

The four matches on the right are my second cousins Sam and Beth and my first cousins Kay and Leonard. Sam and Beth are first cousins, as are Kay and Leonard. Sam's segment is over 16 cM. This is a Rosenbloom segment, from Borisov Belarus, further back than our information. We know no other surnames in my maternal grandmother's family.

The last matching segment is on chromosome 12 and the five matches are between 9.4 and 10.5 cM. The problem is that they are all children of my parents. No cousins of any sort. So there is nothing we can do with that.

Housekeeping notes

I am still waiting on details for my presentations in St. Louis and Kansas City. 

There may be a third venue as well. Unfortunately it will not be Pittsburgh, even though I plan to be there anyway.

30 April 2018 – Jewish SIG of the St. Louis Genealogical Society,
Place, time and topic to be announced

2 May 2018 – Jewish Genealogical Society of Kansas City, Johnson County Central Resource Library, Carmack Room, 9875 West 87th Street, Overland Park Kansas
4:45 – Topic to be announced
6:30 – Additional topic to be announced

Tara, Her Paternal Grandmother, My Cousin Kay and Others

This is the second of at least three posts regarding my families' matches with a young woman named Tara in Toronto. I discussed her matches earlier and now we have results from both her mother and her paternal grandmother. I will discuss her mother's matches in a few days, but there is something else I wish to address first. (My mother used to say that "a few days" means less than a week. No promises.)

Chromosome 8
Using the GEDmatch basic one-to-many tool, on chromosome 8, Tara matches my brother and my sisters Amy and Jean on identical segments of about 12.6 cM, the range being 96,812,006 - 107,594,161.  My sister Sarajoy is on the same segment with 9.8 cM that ends in the same place as the other three, but starts a bit later.

The triangulation is a bit odd as everyone matches on the appropriate segments except Dan and Sarajoy. It is not clear to me how that happens, but that is not what I am getting at.

I then ran the Matching Segments Tool for Tara and found a surprise. My first cousin Kay (our mothers are sisters) is on the same segment almost exactly matching Dan, Jean and Amy. But she hadn't been on the regular one-to-many. And the fancy Tier1 one-to-many has the same result as the old reliable.

The Matching Segments result for Tara is here on the right.

Kay triangulates with my brother and all three sisters on that segment of chromosome 8.


Kay should show up as a match to Tara on the one-to-manys and she doesn't. Something odd is happening at GEDmatch. Perhaps it is because this is the only segment on the twenty-two chromosomes where Tara and Kay match, though I don't know why that should matter..

So now Tara has the results for her paternal grandmother, whom we shall call Ida. Ida matches my brother, my three sisters and Kay on the basic one-to-many slightly more than does Tara. (Perhaps the fact that Ida has two segments with Kay comes into play here.) But Ida does not match Kay on the Tier1 one-to-many. On the other hand, Kay shows up in Ida's Matching Segment results but Sarajoy does not.

There is a lot of inconsistency here and it all seems to lie at the door of GEDmatch. If nothing else, it appears that we must check both one-to-many tools as well as the Matching Segments every time we look at someone new.

But we do know that we have at least one common ancestor with Tara on my mother's side of the family. Unfortunately since none of my second cousins match Tara on this segemnt of chromosome 8, we cannot break it down any further.

Chromosome 23
Another GEDmatch mystery involving Tara and Ida is on chromosome 23, the X.

Tara has  a segment of about 10.5 cM with my sisters Sarajoy and Jean, together with my second cousin Ruth on my mother's father's Gordon/Kugel side.

Ida has Sarajoy and Jean on that same segment using the regular one-to-many - and Kay as well - but not Ruth. The four of them all triangulate so they should all match both Tara and Ida. On the Tier1 one-to-many, neither Kay no Ruth appears. On the Matching Segments tool, Ida matches Jean and Kay, but not Sarajoy.

My feelings about GEDmatch are often just like my feelings about my children. I love them, but I don't always understand them.

There will be more about Tara's matches "in a few days."